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In other news, Pluto's blue haze is not from water but tholins in the atmosphere.

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“That striking blue tint tells us about the size and composition of the haze particles. A blue sky often results from scattering of sunlight by very small particles. On Earth, those particles are very tiny nitrogen molecules. On Pluto they appear to be larger — but still relatively small — soot-like particles we call tholins.”

The water ice is on Pluto's surface, as far as New Horizon's data suggests. If water were in Pluto's atmosphere, it'd freeze and precipitate out rather than linger in the skies.

Charon's outer layer is mostly water ice. When the planet was younger, the water was probably kept liquid by heat from radioactive elements and Charon itself, as it formed. If Charon was warm enough to cause water to melt below the surface, it may have created an ocean. But as the space rock cooled, the ocean would freeze — and expand. That would account for the chasms observed by the orbiter, some of which are more than 4 miles (6.5 kilometers) deep. That's four times the depth of the Grand Canyon.

And I know you have one minute and eleven seconds. A Day on Pluto Reconstructed From New Horizons Images

Of interest is what appears to be a small plume in Pluto's northern hemisphere near its polar region. Look to the upper right of Pluto's limb. It shows up a few frames before Tombaugh Terra rolls into view.

The feature is made of six fractures that span out from a central point like spider legs. The longest one is named Sleipnir Fossa, and it's about 360 miles long. You can see a red subsurface layer exposed by the cracks.

“Science isn’t about voting,” he says. “We don’t vote on the theory of relativity. We don’t vote on evolution. The image of scientists voting gives the public the impression that science is arbitrary.”

Love this article so much. He makes another very good point.

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Stern says that if Earth was located in Pluto’s position in the solar system it also wouldn’t qualify as a planet. “It’s ridiculous,” he says. He even claims that, according to the maths, Brown’s Planet Nine would not quality for planetary status, “no matter how massive it is”.

Excellent article. Science should be about the love of knowledge, discovery, and contributing to society. It should not be about fame, recognition, settling a score, the meaning of a word, an emotional attachment to an idea, or making money. To me, Albert Einstein came closest to being the ideal scientist. He know what science was all about. I wish all scientists would follow his example.

Images captured by New Horizons’ array picked up the spectral fingerprints of unusually clean ice all over Hydra. By itself, that news is not surprising, as New Horizons has revealed that the Plutonian system is quite abundant in water ice. But for some reason, Hydra has some next-level snow purity on its slopes, which results in a much brighter surface than other moons, like Charon.

Pluto is a hybrid dwarf planet-comet-planet… thing, and no one’s quite sure what to make of it.

"This is an intermediate interaction, a completely new type. It's not comet-like, and it's not planet-like. It's in-between," says McComas. "We've now visited all nine of the classical planets and examined all their solar wind interactions, and we've never seen anything like this."

Obviously, Pluto doesn’t actually have a heart that pumps blood like ours do because, you know, it’s an icy dwarf planet. But according to two new studies – one by researchers from Washington University and another from a separate team at Purdue University – Pluto’s heart 'beats' when warm nitrogen ice rises upwards, spreads along the surface, and freezes over Sputnik Planum.

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